


Shadows on Christmas Eve

by GasoliNe



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: JA Secret Santa 2015, jasecretsanta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 15:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5503787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GasoliNe/pseuds/GasoliNe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas Eve is a night that is in-between. In-between life and death, good and evil, when the future and the past almost touch. Jupiter attempts to pierce the veil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows on Christmas Eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gamma Andromedae (Amrei)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrei/gifts).



> This is for Gamma Andromedae's wonderful secret santa prompt: "Seraphi, Jupiter, mirrors, blood, connection". :)  
> My only source for the info needed to write this fic is google and my own mind, so I apologize for any inaccuracies.  
> Enjoy!

Jupiter Jones is not too old for fairytales yet. In fact, at nine years of age, she loves them.  
Not Aleksa. She doesn’t believe in things like that. If she’s in a storytelling mood, it’s not fairy tales but ghost stories, things that teach you a lesson. _The Little Red Riding Hood, The Twelve Months, the Boy Who Cried Wolf._  
So Jupiter goes to ask her aunt Nino instead. 

***

>   
>  St. Silvester’s evening hour  
>  Calls the maidens round:  
>  Shoes to throw behind the door,  
>  Delve the snowy ground.  
>  Peep behind the window there,  
>  Burning wax to pour;  
>  And the corn for chanticleer  
>  Reckon three times o’er.  
>  In the water-fountain fling  
>  Solemnly the golden ring,  
>  Earrings too of gold;  
>  Kerchief white must cover them  
>  While we are chanting over them  
>  Magic songs of old.
> 
> ~ “Svetlana” by Vasily Zhukovsky  
> 

***

”Don’t cross your hands”, aunt Nino cautioned and pushed Jupiter’s hands apart until they rested properly side by side on the table. “And not your legs either. It will ruin everything and then we’ll have to wait for next Christmas”.  
Jupiter nodded eagerly and watched with interest as her aunt guided the flame from the long, nodding match to the candlewicks. Her sparkling bracelets clinked together as she moved around the room, dressed in a long, embroidered scarf and skirt. She smiled, looking incredibly mysterious. Jupiter shivered in admiration.  
She carefully arranged her gangly limbs side by side, trying to breathe in all the smells at once: the smoke from the lit candles and the smell from the green plants in the corner, the cold that slipped in underneath the window from the snowy Chicago night.  
She was tall for her age in a way that suggested she would soon stop growing. That was okay though. Aunt Nino was short too. And right now, Jupiter felt in every cell in her body that she wanted to grow up to be exactly like her aunt one day.  
“Well”, said aunt Nino, sitting down heavily. “Jupiter, my girl. Have you ever wished you could see the future?”  
They took a sheet of paper each and crumpled it in their hands. The sheets were a blank, glossy white with painted flower garlands on the edges – the fire bent them into uneven shapes, but didn’t consume them entirely.  
“Look at the shadows”, aunt Nino instructed her, gesturing to the dark silhouettes of burnt paper that the dancing candle flame painted on the wall. “What do they look like?”  
“I’m not sure”, said Jupiter, her heart beating like a drum in her chest. She squinted at the shadows that, twisting like snakes, flickered over ornate wallpaper. The fire was burning low, the smell of burning wax paper tickling her nose.  
“It looks like…” she said tentatively, restlessly swinging her feet back and forth. “It looks like… a person”.  
She fell silent. If you squinted and tilted your head, the crumpled piece of paper actually looked kind of like a human being. Or did it?  
“Or maybe… a wolf? What does that mean?” she asked after a moment of silence.  
“A wolf?” aunt Nino repeated, her dark eyebrows rising over the frame of her glasses. “Wolves are bad luck, but a person means new friends. Or perhaps…” She pursed her lips, thoughtful.  
Then she bent forward and put out the still glowing embers. “Maybe we should take a closer look. What do you say?”  
She took three mirrors, placing them on the table facing each other so all Jupiter could see was an endless corridor and her own – ever shrinking, like a set of matryoshka dolls – face.  
“Look into the mirror and say after me, and your future husband will appear!”  
“My future husband?” Jupiter repeated, curiosity piqued, and examined the small mirrors with interest.  
“Yes, my dear. But Jupiter, girl, don’t look for too long! The second you see a face appearing, you have to yell _‘Chur menya’_ , or something terrible will happen… Well, what, I don’t know for sure”.  
Jupiter shivered. “Yes, aunt Nino”.  
Aunt Nino, eyes sparkling with mirth after delivering the grievous warning, motioned her forward. “Well then! Are you ready? Repeat after me: ‘Dear future husband, I invite you to dine with me this evening’”.  
“Dear future husband…”  
But before she could say another word the door flew open, flooding the small chamber with light and noise from the party outside.  
“I knew I’d find you two in here”, the grim voice of Aleksa Bolotnikov said. She took one look at the lit candles, the mirrors, the burnt ashes – and her face grew even darker.  
“Mom..!”  
“What did I tell you, Jupiter? Such nonsense! Straight to bed with you, young lady!”  
“But it’s Christmas!”  
“Aleksa…” aunt Nino began and rose from her chair.  
“Not a word! Jupiter, go to your room, and stay there”.  
Jupiter shouted, furious. The scream echoed down the corridor as she stomped to her room. 

***

“She’s _my_ daughter! You can’t go against my wishes in this, Nino!”  
“The girl must be allowed to dream a little!”  
“ _She_ has to be realistic! I’m not going to let her grow up to get her heart broken”.  
“Just because you never dream of anything, Sasha…”  
“Shut up. Don’t you dare. My dreams ended. I grew up”. 

***

The kitchen was full of yellow light and chuckling laughter. It spilled out into the corridor, an island of light in the middle of the growing darkness on the carpet.  
The adults had broken out the red wine from Spain. Jupiter recognized the label on the bottle: green trees and a field on a creamy white background. Cousin Vassily had told her about it: in Spain they’d had fascists once, and they’d been about as bad as the bastards in Kremlin. But it was warm there, even in December. Not like Chicago, and the people were nice. (Sometimes she wondered how fascists were created. Weren’t they born just like normal people were? Aleksa had told her to stop asking silly questions.)  
She watched the adults for a moment. Then she slipped by the kitchen door, quiet as a whisper, and continued to the end of the black corridor.  
The cracked tiles were cold as ice beneath her bare feet as she tiptoed into the bathroom, carefully locking the door behind her. Above the peeling golden faucet that always left gold dust in the sink, was a small cabinet with mirror doors.  
As quietly as she could, Jupiter pushed a small stool underneath it and examined her own face in the open doors. It didn’t look exactly right: instead of an endless line of smaller and smaller Jupiters, it was just her own face and the back of her dishevelled head, dark locks gleaming faintly in the light of the naked lightbulb that greeted her.  
Laughter from the kitchen found its way into the bathroom under the door: Jupiter pursed her lips. With a last look at the closed door, she cleared her throat and said: “Dear future husband, I invite you to dine with me this evening”.  
At first, nothing happened.  
Then… something did.  
At the very, very bottom of the darkness in the mirror, something flickered, like a shadow that seemed to break free from the others, slowly moving towards her. Jupiter stared, entranced. But then, as the shadow seemed to be raising its hand, waving to her, she was suddenly Aleksa Bolotnikov’s daughter again, and she threw the doors closed with a strangled cry and the brittle sound of trembling glass.  
For a second, she stood rooted on the spot, staring into her own, wide-open eyes. Her gasping breath painted the glass a milky grey.  
Then, to her horror, she saw the movement again, reflected back to her on the tiled wall behind her back. The silhouette of a person slowly walking towards her, its hand raised in a stiff greeting.  
The fear struck her silent. She stumbled backwards down onto the hard tiles, pressing her back to the wall. Still, the silhouette kept walking closer, closer, closer…  
Finally, it came to a halt, just behind the mirror glass.  
Aleksa’s words echoed in her head. “The devil…” Jupiter whispered breathlessly.  
The woman on the other side of the glass laughed.  
Or, she would have, if any sound would’ve escaped the mirror. As it was, only the red, red lips parted, her pale chest heaving.  
Jupiter stared. Fascinated, horrified.  
The woman was beautiful, dressed in a long, golden dress (like the walls in the halls of the Underworld, aunt Nino’s stories whispered in Jupiter’s mind) and with thick, black hair framing her face with soft curls. She looked like a princess.  
She also looked very, very real.  
“Who are you?” Jupiter whispered and took a step closer, as if in trance.  
The woman gave a self-satisfied smile and replied.  
“Sorry, I can’t hear you”, Jupiter said and gestured at her ears. The woman looked incredibly annoyed. She tried again, to no avail.  
“Don’t you know mirrors only reflect light”, said Jupiter, frowning just like Mrs. Simmonds did each time she had to explain something twice. “I can’t hear you”.  
The cold sweat starting to dry on her back, Jupiter took a step closer to the sink and stared in awe at the woman in the mirror. It just wasn’t normal. “What are you?”  
The woman rolled her eyes and bit her finger. Drops of blood gathered like red pearls at the wound.  
I am you, she wrote, in curling, red letters that Jupiter had to make an effort to understand.  
“What?” she said, her heart beating hard. “But… I’m not a princess. I’m just a kid”.  
The woman smiled, showing all her teeth. She snapped her fingers… and shrank.  
Jupiter gawked. “You’re… me!”  
The girl on the other side – a perfect reflection of herself – smirked. She tapped the curling letters with her knuckle.  
I… am… you.  
“I have to… Mom!” Jupiter stuttered and stumbled for the door. The girl in the mirror shook her head, soundlessly hitting the glass with her bloody fist. She uncurled it, wrote:  
Stay. Pointed to the first words again. I am you.  
She wrote: I need you. We need each other.  
Jupiter stopped with her hand on the door handle. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses snuck in under the door. But inside the bathroom, it was cold and empty.  
She let go of the door handle, turning to face the mirror again.  
“Why me?” she asked.  
The girl put her hand to the mirror glass. The outlines, as Jupiter put her hand on top of hers, matched perfectly. The girl smiled.  
Her face in the mirror was clearer than Jupiter’s own reflection: the girl a picture in colour, Jupiter’s face smudged like paint in water.  
The girl leaned forward, the mirror surging like water in a disturbed lake as her face broke the surface.  
“ _Come_ ”.  
Jupiter barely had time to scream. 

***

“Where is she? Where is my daughter?”  
“Sorry, ma’am, but we have no leads. She’s just vanished”. 

***

Jupiter is too old for fairy tales. In fact, at nineteen years of age, she would probably hate them.  
Not Aleksa. Fairy tales are the only thing she’s got nowadays. She only reads the old classics, the ones with happy endings. _Cinderella, Maria Morevna, Sleeping Beauty._ She’s still waiting for her own little girl to come home. But she’s almost given up hope by now.  
So when there’s a sound of broken glass from the bathroom late on a Christmas Eve ten years later, she grabs a frying pan, preparing to beat the living crap out of the supposed robber.  
But it’s not just any robber standing on the cracked tiles, methodically crushing mirror shards under the heel of her heavy boot. It’s a young woman with thick, black hair framing her face with soft curls.  
They stare at each other for a second. Aleksa drops her frying pan with a thud.  
The young woman’s lips are trembling. 

***

“… Mom?”

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Twelve Months_ and _Maria Morevna_ are Slavic fairytales that you should definitely look up.
> 
> _Chur menya_ is phrase used for banishing spirits and the like. I hope I got it right. 
> 
> The "Spanish fascists" are, of course, Francisco Franco and his buddies. I figured cousin Vassily is old enough to have been alive when that stuff went down.


End file.
